


Only constellations stay the same

by treble



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Post Season/Series 01 Finale, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:01:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treble/pseuds/treble
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Annie-centric fic following the season 1 finale. Archiving all my old fic from LJ.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only constellations stay the same

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** Pretty much the only thing in the world I own is a small puppy who just ate my shoes. These characters are Dan Harmon's.

  ***

It’s an abnormally hot summer.  
   
The first night Annie moves into her new apartment, Abed points out that the bottom right corner of her air conditioner drips every 7 seconds. It is the kind of thing she knows should bother her, knows should have her calling her new landlord in one squeaky run-on breath, but instead she takes to counting out the drops, regulating her sleep at night until her sighs match those of the broken machine.

It does create a constant puddle on the floor under the window, a problem she addresses with a small plastic bowl, and calls it personal growth.

***

Her parents had been surprisingly supportive when she informed them with little warning that she was moving out, and although she had insisted she was going to get a job to pay her rent, she spends the summer pretending not to notice the deposits made to her bank account on the 28th of every month.

Packing had taken her two days longer than scheduled, between the game of survivor she plays with every childhood relic and the inevitable trying out of three different methods of sorting her boxes. On the second try, her Little Mermaid sheets make it into the box marked: _Linens, Bedroom, Daily_. On the third try, a single pillowcase from the set is the only surviving witness of a sudden and devastating packing massacre.  It ends up in a box marked in bold orange Sharpie: _Bedroom, Miscellaneous, Private_ , next to an illicitly obtained copy of The Guide to Getting it On, and below the Hello Kitty jewelry box in which the remnants of her pill collection is stashed.

He calls for the first time the night before her move.  She doesn’t answer, rationalizes that there is no way to get to the phone in time. She’s certain her slight hesitation has nothing to do with the fact that he has his own, easily identifiably ring tone (No Diggity, No Doubt. His choice), one that causes her to freeze in the middle of sealing a set of boxes with tape (pink, for bathroom items.)  
   
She stares at her phone intently to see if he’ll leave a voicemail.

He doesn’t leave a message and she doesn’t call back.

She turns instead to marking off the pros and cons of keeping her collection of Betty and Veronica comic books.

It is the start of the second week POST-KISS and she has found that a unique and rarely seen breed of pride has settled inside her chest, serving as companion to the surprise she still feels at recollecting the boldness of her actions that night.

She doesn’t wait for the phone to ring and she doesn’t consider calling.

***  
   
On the morning of her move, Britta, Troy, and Abed show up unexpectedly in a battered minivan. She’s surprised to see them, but so grateful for the help that she keeps her protests silent when Troy goes long with a box labeled: _Living Room, Figurines, Medium_. Eventually Annie makes out that Shirley is still on vacation with her kids and apparently, Pierce had been sidetracked with an elaborate Troy/Abed scheme involving pink feathers, an illegal Mexican cartoon, and three cocktail napkins. She’s thankful for his absence, since she suspects a day of lifting boxes would have inevitably translated into a day of jokes about hemorrhoids and requests for back-rubs.

According to Abed, Jeff’s absence is mostly due to a slightly sketchy and unspecified job somewhere in town. While he casually relays this information, Annie’s very best attempts to gauge Britta's emotional well-being via furtive glances go wasted when she gets an eyelash stuck in her eye and has to excuse herself to the bathroom.

When she comes back out, the little comforting speech she had so carefully crafted for POST-DANCE Britta gets discarded when she sees her laughingly throw a porcelain kitten at Troy from out of the broken box at their feet. Troy manages to fit the decapitated kitten head on his pinky finger and spends the rest of the morning having its high pitched and oddly accented voice direct the move.

Annie’s somehow expecting it when Jeff shows up with a couple pizzas, conveniently timed for right after the rest of the group has mutinied over Annie’s request to rearrange her newly purchased Craigslist sofas one last time. She’s intently rifling through boxes: _Kitchenware, Beverages, Plastic_ to find her new lemonade pitcher when he walks in. He offers her a little wave before making his way across the room, unfolding himself on the larger of the two sofas, and plopping the pizzas on her makeshift coffee-table. The look between he and Britta is somewhere between guarded and bemused, and Annie breaths a sigh of relief when murmuring she can’t hear is followed by laughter and Britta throwing a roll of paper towels at Jeff’s head.

Then Annie goes and locks the door because she really can’t have strangers wandering in off the street.

Later, as Britta and Jeff bicker over who deserves the last slice of pizza, the conversation turns to what Abed has deemed “possible character motivations for Annie staying in Greendale for the summer.”

Troy and Abed are pacing her living room, Troy absentmindedly, Abed methodically, both stopping every two feet to jump up and down twice. Abed says they are testing for structural soundness. Troy just nods emphatically, before throwing Abed a subtle smile.

From her perch on the floor, Annie peers at the hardwood with a frown.

“The whole Vaughn thing had run its course. He has matured as much as he is going to, and as a character, there isn’t much left to develop. Annie has a deeper well of potential.” Abed offers sagely, frowning at the spot next to her radiator.

“I just hate Delaware.” Troy adds, wistfully. “Every single time, it’s Delaware.”

“She doesn’t need a reason to not want to go with Vaughn across the country. Maybe she just wanted to be her own woman. Maybe she didn’t want someone else directing her actions.” Britta rolls her eyes and smiles down at her. “Whatever, either way Annie, I’m just glad you are staying.

“Thanks Britta. I am too. I think that this summer, well, it’s going to be important for me!” Annie says brightly, measuring out every word. When her glance lands on him, his eyes are pulling away and he is grabbing at the temporarily forgotten piece of disputed pizza. At Britta’s raised eyebrow he licks the whole slice, before ripping it in two and offering the smaller half to her with a challenging grin.

“Ugh. You bastard. You would use a sentimental moment for personal gain.”

His grin almost falters, but before it fully wilts Britta grabs the offering with a small smile and heads over to where Abed is now kneeling on the floor. “Jeff just feels uncomfortable sharing his own theory for why Annie is staying.” Abed offers, his voice slightly muffled from under the radiator.

“No theory, I just figured she didn’t actually have it in her to move across the country for a guy, particularly for one who tries to rhyme everything with the letter B.” Jeff says, slowly standing up and collecting empty pizza boxes. She half-heartedly lets out one of her almost silent gasps that he, as if on autopilot, mockingly imitates, and then sidesteps her frown with a shrug.

They don’t touch when he leaves.

***

She’s counted what is probably over 400 drops from her leaking air conditioner that night (she lost count a little around 125) when she finally clicks send on a text message drafted before he had even left her house. “Are you saying you think I should have gone?

His reply is immediate. “no annie.”

She waits almost 50 drops before she breaks. “It’s not like I stayed for you.”

It is only 8 drops until he responds, “good,” followed two drops later with, “i’m still glad you stayed.”

She turns the ringer off her phone, puts it in her drawer and falls asleep almost immediately.

Her dream is of a ferris wheel and in her sleep she can feel that little stomach drop she always gets when the wheel begins its ascent.

***

The second week of June, she gets a text from Britta inviting her out to a concert that same night. It’s an artist she’s never heard of but apparently Britta’s friends have an extra ticket.

Britta shows up at her house an hour early, her hair slightly wild and a giant leather bag in tow.

Annie lets her in and Britta’s eyes dart wildly as she rocks on her heels, “I just want to apologize ahead of time. These girls tonight, they were from a phase, and well, they aren’t always nice, and wait, Annie. What are you wearing?” Britta’s full gaze lands on Annie for the first time and takes in her faded t-shirt, her attempt at wavy hair.

Annie nods vigorously, beaming. “What do you think?” She asks with a series of enthusiastic fist pumps. “Rocker girl chic!” She’s bouncing up and down while she waits for Britta’s response, before she follows Britta’s gaze down to her ripped jeans and five year-old Keds. She looks back up quickly. “Did I do it wrong?”

“No, No!…I mean, I could help you get ready?” Britta says with a brilliant, soft smile. “I think you always look so great! Really, just so put together. And this is great too. But, maybe with some different shoes? And lemme help you with make-up.”

Britta dumps out the contents of her bag and Annie’s suddenly being pushed down into a chair, her hair being scrunched and tousled and weird chalky black stuff applied to her eyes.

“You know I totally don’t care what you look like, right? You should always be yourself. I’m just doing this to help you, so you can be yourself and not worry.”

"I know, Britta,” Annie says solemnly, hiding her smile. “It’s really nice. Thanks.”

The concert is actually fun, and Britta’s friends seem pretty harmless, all fake leather and black liner. There are a lot of comments about how everyone worthwhile has switched to veganism and how so and so is now selling her soul in the corporate world. After everyone orders their first drink, Annie slinks up to the bar and ask for tonic water with lime, the fake ID secured by Abed safely in her back pocket. Britta’s friends assume it’s gin and offer her a collective nod of approval and by the time the conversation turns to sex, Annie is feeling drunk from their details anyway. She has to pinch her thighs to keep from blushing when one girl starts talking about how everything a man has to offer can be duplicated with latex and silicone.

Through it all, Annie watches the way Britta is less Britta around them, more slouchy, less direct, jumpier. Her laugh is louder but her eyes might be a little quieter.

Annie is holding Britta’s keys as they stumble out of the club at 1am, laughing over the way Britta says whiskey (“WhisKAY, Annie! whisKAY!), when they see Jeff, his arm casually slung over a petite brunette.

Britta whoops with laughter as she goes running over to him. “Did you just go listen to angry lesbian music?”

Jeff shifts uncomfortably. “No, Sherlock Drunky. We were at the bar next door.”

The back and forth goes on a little longer, but Annie just stands there, taking in the woman’s shoulder length brown hair, pale white skin, and bright blue eyes, which currently occupy an expression somewhere past confused and bordering on annoyed by the circling Britta-monster. Annie stares at him as she fingers the sleeve of Britta’s spare leather jacket, which she suddenly realizes is too hot for the sticky summer weather. She feels abruptly snapped out of her faux-inebriation. He doesn’t look at her once.

They are in the car before Annie realizes introductions had never been made.

When Annie gets home she digs through her last unpacked box: _Miscellaneous, Miscellaneous_ , and finds the CD that Britta had given her for her birthday. It is the Indigo Girls and after twenty minutes of trying to figure out where to play it (she doesn't own a CD player and her computer has no disk drive), she ends up on YouTube, listening to their songs through videos until she settles on one that she can unequivocally say she likes.

She writes out the lyrics with her favorite pink sparkly pen and mounts them on the wall by her desk, a couple haphazardly drawn stars decorating the border of the bright yellow construction paper.

She’s in bed at four a.m. when her phone beeps. “don’t become a Britta-bot.”

She waits 10 drops before replying, “it seems that’s no longer your type.”

She turns off her phone so she doesn’t have to wait for a response she suspects she won’t get.

She’s not sure about the rest of the look but she decides she’ll keep the smoky eye makeup.

When she tells Britta the next day she likes the song Closer to Fine, Britta pats her on the arm with a smile. “That was my first favorite too.”

_The best thing you’ve ever done for me is to help me take my life less seriously_

***

It is the last week of June when the cicadas arrive. Every seven years, Greendale is blessed, or cursed, or just faced, with an influx of rare blue cicadas, who for five weeks subvert every noise of the town with the loud hum of their tiny wings. The noise is so loud that Annie has to turn up the air conditioner to hear the drip.

***

By the end of her first month in the building, Annie has managed to befriend almost all of her fellow tenants. This is achieved through a combination of going door to door with baked goods and her weekly habit of vacuuming the common room.

She offers to babysit for the family in 4A, commiserates about the broken hall lights with the couple in 2C, and wins over almost everyone else when she makes new labels for the mail-room. But despite this, the older man in the apartment next door (3B) remains a hold out, shutting the door in her face even when she has banana bread in hand. She tries two more times, but after the third door slam she takes to getting her revenge by sticking her tongue out at his door every time she passes.

She still leaves some cookies outside his door from time to time, but only, she rationalizes, because she happens to have extras.

When she decides to throw a building-wide mixer, she spends 4 hours stringing up tiny white Christmas lights in the lounge and crafting the perfect, age-neutral, dance-inducing playlist.

Only half the building shows up and the party is over by 11:30pm. Still, the news is over by then so she qualifies it as a success.

***

It is just hinting at mid-summer the night that Annie finds herself with Troy and Abed at a party of old high school acquaintances.

No one makes fun of her.

No one makes fun of Troy for hanging out with her.

She actually overhears someone giving Troy a high-five for bringing her to the party.

It takes an hour before she realizes that no one even recognizes her. She starts to remind them, but instead ends up giving out her phone number to four different guys, all of whom had spent the years of 2004-2009 making her life hell.

Three of the four call by the end of the week. She lets them all go to voicemail.

When it does eventually slip that the hot chick with Troy is Annie Adderoll, the guys there don’t seem to care and most of the girls seem slightly awed. As for the ones that aren’t, well Abed and Troy refuse to leave her side long enough for any of their catty comments to infiltrate. Abed makes some comment about teen queens past their peak, struggling to come to terms with their declining attractiveness and the inevitability of their own oxy-contin problems. Troy hums Chariots of Fire.

She makes plans to go shopping with a girl named Becky she used to sit next to in sophomore year calculus.

***

She has her first ever cigarette on the 4th of July, as the fireworks are doing their best to cling to the sky. She coughs so hard someone nearby rolls their eyes and as soon as she can breathe she starts in on a manic lecture about pointless and delayed teenage rebellion and statistics on lung cancer. The guy who brought her to the party kisses her hard to stop her talking and she ends up leaving early by herself.

***

Annie and Britta take a sketching class together during the second summer session at Greendale, after they find that Watercolor 101 is oversubscribed. Both solemnly vow not to tell the rest of the group, with half smiles on their face that suggest they both believe the other will break first.

The first day of figure drawing, Annie spends almost the entire class fixated on the model’s lower left ankle. When she finally makes her way up to the woman’s breasts, she flushes so red that she can hear Britta murmur, “Oh, Annie!” with a patronizing grin from two stations away.

She drags her glance up to the model’s face and the woman gives her such an enigmatic smile that Annie flushes all over again. But she forces herself to take a deep breath, refocusing her efforts on capturing the curves and shapes of the woman’s form.

Britta takes her out for pizza after class in celebration of her “liberation.” Annie silently celebrates the fact that her drawing is better than Britta's.

She has to start the whole process over again the following week when the model is a 60 year-old male.

***

The rest of July is also spent going on a couple of dates with a former football star, a quieter guy who never really made fun of her in high school, mostly because he never really spoke. She tries to tease him once but mostly resigns herself to conversations on how his shoulder is doing following his latest injury.

The night of their second date, she sees Jeff walking into the restaurant as they’re walking out. The same woman as the night of the concert is in tow, her long brown hair pulled back with a butterfly clip. Jeff looks at her date and she looks at his and they both start speaking at once, before opting for a quick wave and a laugh.

She gets his message before she’s even out of her date’s car. “you might finally get that letter jacket.”

When the footballer calls the third time, she gently tells him she’s met someone else.

***

She paints her kitchen a bright lime green and fights the headache it induces for two weeks, before giving up and painting it back to the original pale yellow. She tries to use her new drawing skills to sketch a border near the cabinets and mostly doesn't care when she gets paint all over her clothes.

***

They have their first get together as a group at the end of July, when Pierce decides to throw a belated 4th of July cook-out.

Troy and Abed volunteer to come over and pick her up. They arrive early and enter without knocking, Abed having somehow secured a key to her apartment earlier in the summer. They immediately collapse on her sofa and launch into their ongoing rocks, paper, scissors tournament while Annie debates between the two new dresses she had purchased on a shopping trip with Becky. She eventually settles on the strapless blue eyelet, loose waves in her hair, and it’s an unidentifiable wash of _something_ when Abed crooks his head at her curiously and tells her she looks “different.”

“I think he means you look really hot Annie.” Troy interjects.

“That was implied. I just meant her general persona seems different. We’ve been hanging out with her a lot this summer so I somehow fell victim to the cliché of not recognizing the obvious change.”

Troy tilts his head and studies Annie intently before shrugging dismissively. “Like I said, hot.”

Annie is beaming. “Thanks Abed.”

***

Jeff is the last to show up at Pierce’s and trailing a step behind him is that petite brunette again, who finally gets introduced as Amanda. She seems pleasant enough, and if she’s a little quiet the whole night, that’s to be expected, as the group fights over every word and stories devolve into ten minute long inside jokes.

Jeff seems subdued, and passes on at least three snark opportunities.

After dinner, Britta and Abed challenge Shirley and Troy to a game of Beirut, with Pierce offering to referee, “so the immigrants don’t steal a hard-earned victory.”

No one is sure which team should be offended.

Annie watches for a while and then wanders toward the house, discovering a small game room in the basement with a slightly battered Ms. Pac-Man machine in the corner.

He finds her bent over the controls, concentrating hard on the fourth level (the pretzel level), her tongue slightly sticking out between her teeth. She manages not to jump when he steps up right behind her, watching as the red ghost traps her in a corner.

Without saying a word, he presses two players.

They silently take turns and when she beats him by 3,000 points her victory is registered only with a radiant smile and a triumphant raise of her right eyebrow.

He hangs his head in exaggerated shame, fist to his heart. When he looks back up they both smile at one another softly.

“Amanda seems, nice.” Her voice sounds high when she breaks the silence.

He clears his throat. “Ah yes, she’s a real grown-up.”

“Does she know yet that you aren’t?”

“Ooh little baby Edison with the zing. But you are dating fellows in their twenties now, right? Making your way my way?”

Annie just stares at him with a slight frown until his flippant grin begins to fade away.  He swallows twice.

“She makes you kind of boring.” She offers.

“What? I could never be boring.”

“I just, well I think you shouldn’t have to date someone boring to prove you are maturing, moving forward.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“What are you doing?”

“Well, not taking advice from a -“ he cuts himself off and sighs, looks her squarely in the eye. “I don’t know.”

“Annie, you look really nice,” He adds abruptly. “Really, really, nice.”

Despite efforts to hold it in, she feels the blush sweep over her face and his low laugh spreads into a full out grin.

When the warmth of his smile begins to slink its way inside, she has to turn away. She looks down at her hands, his hands, the distance between. She’s suddenly fixated by the shape of his thumb, the way it’s tapping the table in time with the music from the arcade game. She watches as it seems to tap closer to hers and she holds her breath as he slowly swipes his index finger across the back of her hand, turning her wrist so he can trail across her palm. She instinctively closes her hand over his and they stand there with their fingers intertwined, both sets of eyes locked on their hands, until a burst of laughter from outside wafts into the room. Annie smiles gently at the floor and opens her palm. She pats his hand once and is the first to walk away.

***

She gets a text two days later, as she’s curled up on her couch watching HGTV and experimenting with gold eyeshadow.  
   
“I’m too awesome to be boring. you were right.”

**

She meets someone in the beginning of August. He’s twenty-nine and he approaches her in the Laundromat after his sock miraculously ends up in her pile. Before she knows it, he has her phone number and she has dinner plans.

He’s slightly smarmy and very charming and it almost works, but after the third date she’s left thinking he isn’t quite as good at it yet.

What ends up being their last date is on the only cool night of the summer and when she gets home she turns off the air conditioner before crawling into bed. Bundled in her sheets, she texts Jeff, “I met your past this week. I like you better now.”

The five minutes before he texts back are too quiet, filled with her pulse racing and fingers twitching. She slips out of bed and flips on the air conditioner and grabs another blanket.

His response is waiting for her. “me too.”

***

She tries for one week to go by Ann. It is the week most of the cicadas fall, impossible to avoid on the sidewalk, constant crunching below her feet.

***

She runs into him at a flea market the second week of August, at 2pm in the afternoon on a Sunday. He’s alone and he’s drinking coffee, and despite the fact that it’s impossibly hot out he’s wearing his ever present jeans. She’s finally looking for a coffee-table for the living room when she spots him from half an aisle away, rummaging through what looks like a collection of old Doctor Who memorabilia.

She’s bubbling when she’s able to successfully sneak up behind him. “I think they sell Dungeons and Dragons manuals a couple stalls down…” She laughs out. He drops the action figure he is holding and spins around at the sound of her voice.

He looks at her with a smirk. “How do you even know Dungeons and Dragons?”

“I went to summer camp...

He raises his eyebrow at her.

“Fine. I saw the movie.”

“Of course you did.”

“Wanna help me find a coffee-table?”

He seems surprised. “Why Annie Edison, you still don’t have a proper coffee-table? That smacks of procrastination. I’m so proud. After you.” He offers a little bow as he gestures down the aisle toward the used furniture stalls. They spend the next hour casually bickering over wood vs. plastic, circular vs. square, Doctor Who vs. Battlestar Galactica.

At some point, their hands slip together, but it isn’t really clear whose hand reaches out first.

Neither let go.

***

By the end of the summer, the sound of her dripping air conditioner has become so omnipresent that all of her memories are laced with the splosh of water droplets and the hum of the last surviving cicadas. The gentle snores she finds that he makes in his sleep come at intervals too random for counting and eventually they become just another in the series of her summer sounds.

All in all, it’s a particularly good summer.

***


End file.
